Prune danish? Those must be men from Jupiter!

Jun. 24th, 2011

Jun. 24th, 2011

I turned 32 last Monday, and it was the culmination of an all-weekend birthday celebration.

On Friday Greg visited NYU-Poly’s Brooklyn campus for the very first time. He got to meet all of my co-workers, and they were, of course, delighted to meet him. They asked him all about the Long Island campus that none of us have ever even seen. Greg purposely wore his RPI shirt (just to let everyone know where his true allegiance lies), and the first thing Jennifer said when she saw him was, “I’m making you change!” She headed straight for our official swag closet, pulled out an NYU-Poly shirt that said “Alumni in Training” on the front, and handed it to him.

I took him on a tour of the library, and then we walked around MetroTech Center so he could take pictures of all the weird installation art. I took him past the dorms, and he took pictures of the outdated signage, (the Othner dorms still carry the Polytechnic University logo.) Then we went poking around in the main building, sticking our heads into classrooms and gawking at all the chemical and civil engineering equipment.

Afterwards we went up to my mom’s place, and me, Greg, mom, and Mike went out to dinner at this Greek and Italian restaurant that I’ve been meaning to take Greg to for a while. I got some great presents. Mike gave me the new Beastie Boys CD, and mom got me tickets to see Book of Mormon! I am glad I got to spend some time with them. I know mom really wanted to do something with me for my birthday, and at first I was so swamped at work I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do anything at all. But, luckily it all worked out and I was able to hang out with my mom and my brother and shoot the shit and have fun.

On Saturday, Greg drove me to Barnes & Noble and I picked out two books for him to give me for my birthday :-) Then, at my request, he drove an hour up to Bronxville so we could have dinner at the Italian restaurant we used to eat at on a weekly basis back when I was living in the Bronx. Bronxville has changed a lot since I left. Stores that were there the entire time I worked at SLC were closed. As we were walking around after dinner I said, “Look what happens; I move out of the area and everything goes to shit.”

The following day was Father’s Day so Greg and I went over to his parents place and had a joint father’s day/birthday celebration. Greg’s parents gave me a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble, and his mom baked me a chocolate cake with white icing, yummy, yumminess. For Father’s Day Greg gave his dad a couple compilations of Rolling Stones bluegrass covers, because his dad loves bluegrass and classic rock, so what could be better, right? We listened to them after dinner and they were pretty good. Of course, it takes a lot of effort to fuck up the Stones (though Vanessa Carlton managed to quite well with that God awful cover of Paint It Black off her first album.)

I took the actual day of my birth off from work, and spent my time watching TV and cleaning the house. When Greg came home from work he took me out for dinner yet again, because he said I couldn’t spend my entire birthday locked in the house. So when all was said and done I didn’t have to cook or pay for a single meal all weekend. Sweet!

And I returned to work on Tuesday to find a banner with the words “Happy Birthday” draped across the wall of my cubicle, and two birthday cards on my desk, one from the Director of Development and one from the rest of the development staff. The one from the staff was in the shape of a library due date card, and each staff member signed a line. It was so cute! And Jennifer brought in gourmet cupcakes for us all to share in celebration of my birth.

It was all lovely, a definite improvement over last year. For once I actually had a happy birthday :-)